College Football Going Mobile, Good News For Verizon And Qualcomm

Verizon Wireless
will
stream more than 100 live college football games, including
20 bowl games, to mobile handsets this season via its V CAST
Mobile TV service. This is good news for sports fans, as leagues
and TV networks have long limited Internet and mobile
distribution to protect their huge broadcasting contracts. It's
also potentially good news for Verizon and Qualcomm's MediaFlo
subsidiary, which powers the mobile TV system -- live sports
makes their product a lot more attractive than feature films or
sitcom reruns. To be sure, watching a football game on a tiny
phone screen isn't ideal. But both pro and college football
attract a lot of ardent fans who will put up with all sorts of
expense and inconvenience to track their teams.

Verizon's mobile TV service requires both a $15-per-month
subscription and a special handset capable of receiving TV
broadcasts. Meaning the vast majority would-be college football
watchers would need buy new phones to catch a game this fall. But
as more phones support VCAST Mobile TV, and as the leagues and
networks broadcast more live games to mobile devices, Verizon has
a much more powerful weapon in its battle against the iPhone.